


Darling, You're the One I Want

by perfectlystill



Series: A Real Thing [2]
Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: But No Cheating, Discussion of Cheating, F/M, Idiots in Love, Long-Distance Relationship, Mild Sexual Content, Secret Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 01:13:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21262664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlystill/pseuds/perfectlystill
Summary: “I thought about having an affair today,” she says, striding through the quad back to her dorm, the sun hanging low in the sky.“Huh?”“He’s in my English class. Super cute. Brown hair. Likes Virginia Woolf.”“What?”





	Darling, You're the One I Want

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know! I can't stop thinking about Peter and MJ being stupid and eloping at 18! I'm just going to let myself play around in this verse and see what manifests.
> 
> Title from Taylor Swift's "Paper Rings."

“I thought about having an affair today,” she says, striding through the quad back to her dorm, the sun hanging low in the sky.

“Huh?”

“He’s in my English class. Super cute. Brown hair. Likes Virginia Woolf.” 

“What?”

“Likes me, too, I think.”

“MJ?” Peter asks, voice pinched in an adorably confused and concerned fashion. “Is this a joke I’m not getting?”

“No.”

“If it’s a joke, I need you to explain the punchline.”

“Peter,” she says, picking up her pace as she jogs up the steps. “He’s just cute.”

“Okaaaaay,” he says, five long syllables cracking in his mouth. 

MJ presses her lips together, clamping down on a smile as she swipes her ID to get into the building. “Am I not allowed to find other people cute, Peter?”

“You said you thought about having an affair!”

“Yeah,” she drawls, hand sliding up the banister as she climbs a flight of stairs to her suite. “I did.”

“That’s not finding other people cute, MJ.”

“I wouldn’t have thought about having an affair with him if he wasn’t cute,” she says. 

MJ’s pushing her luck, she knows. But Peter sounds baffled and annoyed more than he sounds actually hurt. 

“I’m sure you find that blonde girl who keeps commenting emojis on all your posts cute,” she says. “I think it’s healthier in a marriage to be honest about these things. There are conflicting reports on honesty and secrets, but I don’t like liars, and I value the truth.”

“Who?” Peter asks, voice muffled like he’s scraping his hand down his face. 

Michelle opens the door to her suite. It’s heavy, naturally swings shut on its own, but MJ pushes it with her boot to get it there quicker, hearing it click into place. She flips the lock, grabbing the marker on top of Sarah’s whiteboard to scribble a note about not leaving it open if she’s not in the living space. 

“Em?” Peter asks. 

“Sarah keeps coming back from her psych class and taking a nap in her room without locking the door.”

“Oh.” She imagines Peter swallows. He’s probably tugging on his hair, too, flustered and frustrated. 

She misses his nerdy face and messy hair. Facetime only goes so far, but Michelle will be home for Thanksgiving. She’ll kiss all over Peter’s stupid face, and he’ll smile against her skin and call himself her husband, because he_ is_. 

And it’ll be awesome. 

MJ isn’t sure absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it certainly hasn’t made hers any less so.

“Anyway, it’s fine if you think the cute blonde girl is cute. She is. I’m just saying you shouldn’t lie to me about it. Lying breeds distrust, and then you end up divorced by the time you’re 20.”

“Divorced?” Peter chokes. 

“Yeah.” She creaks open the door to the room she shares with Brittany and finds blissfully empty. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he sighs. 

“I know.”

She sets her backpack next to her desk and smiles like a complete dork at her wedding ring - maybe marrying one is contagious. 

MJ sits on the edge of her bed, unzipping her boots and toeing them off. “Are we doing Thanksgiving separately this year?” she asks.

“Yeah? I mean, I think May and I are going to Ms. Potts’s cabin upstate, and you could totally come, but I’m not sure your parents would want that?”

“Probably not. They don’t trust superhero stuff.” A beat. “They don’t think you’re Spider-Man anymore,” she reiterates, because sometimes Peter is paranoid about it despite having the gall to think _she’s_ the one majoring in conspiracy theories. “But Thanksgiving with the CEO of SI is a bit more than that awful internship excuse accounts for. They still don’t like that you did that, by the way.”

“MJ,” Peter whines.

“What? My mom is right not to trust large corporations.”

“I know.”

MJ smiles, flopping back on her bed. “How long are you gonna be upstate?”

“Just Thursday.”

“Good.”

“Yeah,” he exhales. “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too.”

“You’re not going to cheat on me in the next two weeks?” he asks.

MJ hums, just to be an asshole. “No, probably not.”

“Just let me know if that changes,” he says, like maybe he _does_ get the joke. 

She closes her eyes, scooting backwards and finagling herself underneath the sheets. “Sure.”

“Nap time?”

“Mmhmm. Do you want to listen to me breathe like a creep?” she asks, too soft to be anything other than in love.

He still gets nightmares, worse than the ones MJ had after she was blipped back into existence in a quiet corner of the library, blinking slowly with a crick in her neck as though waking from a nap, the copy of _Beartown_ she was reading nowhere to be found. 

Peter worries about his handle on reality, about doing the right thing, and about the people he loves. He needs reassurance. The verbal variety is always good, but May is better at comforting turns of phrase, Ned at allowing Peter to see himself more clearly with a well-earned boost to his ego to counteract the self-flagellation. 

MJ’s better at the physical: a hand in his hair, a kiss to his forehead, splaying her body on top of his and letting the pressure of her replace the pressure he needlessly places on himself, the crushing feeling of buildings and trains hitting him, of a responsibility and burden too large for one person to carry.

But she’s 222 miles away.

So Peter likes to listen to her breathe, the quiet, steady in and out that accompanies being alive. The beat of her heart, going on and on. 

It’s the best Michelle can do. 

“I do,” he says, an airy, affectionate laugh that makes MJ smoosh her face into her pillow. “But I have to leave for class in ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes then?”

“I need to get my stuff together,” he says. “Is that okay? I don’t want to make too much noise.”

She bites around a smile. She loves him. “I can sleep through anything, Peter.”

She can’t, not really, but he knows that. 

“Just checking,” he says. “‘Night, MJ.”

“It’s a nap, loser.”

He laughs again, muffled like he doesn’t want to jolt her awake any more than she already is, and it makes MJ curl her toes against her lumpy, Harvard mattress, happy in a way only Peter ever brings out of her. 

She yawns. “‘Night, husband.”

MJ’s stomach flutters, and where it used to feel like an absolute act of betrayal and lack of control, it’s now something she welcomes. 

Especially when Peter flings open his door, crooked grin and bright eyes, breathing heavy like he ran to answer. Which wouldn’t make him breathe heavy, anyway.

It’s her.

He loves her. 

Michelle never knew the sureness of someone loving her would feel this good. She never knew she would trust anyone enough to be sure that they love her when they tell her they do. 

She’s been overly honest to compensate for other people’s lack of it, but with Peter, she knows in her gut that he’s telling the truth. Even when it’s sugarcoated to sound better than the reality, it’s not a lie to make her feel better, it’s still true. He still believes it. 

Maybe she’s gone soft, but it’s nice, gooey and delicious like fancy hot chocolate melting in warm milk. 

“Hey,” she says. 

“I love you,” he rushes, grabbing her face in his hands - warm and calloused and _god_, she missed him touching her - and pulling her in for a kiss, soft and sweet and short. 

“I had a sex dream about Adam.”

“What?” he asks, eyes wide, still holding her in the doorway. 

“Yep.”

“Like, from the Bible, or from your English class?”

“English class.”

His brow furrows, he drops her face, and his mouth twists. 

It was the wrong thing to say. At least right now. 

Peter runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up in the back, and MJ locks the door, pulling off her hat, stepping out of her boots and hanging up her coat.

“Where’s May?” she asks. 

“The shelter,” he says absently. “You had a dream about him?”

“Yes. But I’m sure you’ve thought about blondie, so.” She shrugs, shaking it off.

“I don’t even know who you’re talking about.”

“Cute blonde. You just did that take-home test together.” A beat. “I think that’s cheating.”

“Gwen?” he asks, befuddled. “MJ, I don’t want to sleep with Gwen.”

“But you’ve thought about it.”

“You had a sex dream about Adam!”

She tuts. “That’s not a no.”

“MJ,” Peter sighs, exasperated. The hurt from earlier leaving his face in increments. Good. “I only think about you. When I … you know, I think about you. And you’re dreaming about Adam making love to you?”

“Pfft,” she huffs. Like it’s absurd. “I think about him shoving me against a desk and fucking me.”

“Jesus.” His face is all splotchy and red, the same way it is when he comes. 

“I’m just kidding. Girls don’t masturbate.”

Peter sputters.

He is her favorite person in the whole universe, or multiverse, or however many worlds and timelines there are, and it amazes her that she gets to spend her entire life with him. 

“I’m _kidding_,” she stresses, taking a step toward him, appeased when he doesn’t move back. “I do masturbate.”

“Can you like, stop messing with me for a minute? Please?”

“Peter, I had a dream about Adam fucking me. He couldn’t make love to me. He doesn’t love me, and I don’t love him.”

“That’s not really helping,” Peter says, eyes wide, expression drifting toward morose. 

Not good. Very bad. Kind of terrible.

That sentence didn’t hit the intended target, and now Peter’s shoulders are slumped, head dipped, frown small and hurt. 

Shit. 

“Hey,” MJ says, grabbing his hand, flinching when he pulls back like he’s trying to pull away from her. In a split second, he decides not to, fingers curling around hers, but she felt the instinct all the same. “I’m sorry. I guess, I do think he’s cute. And it’s not a test about you thinking Gwen is pretty--”

“--I swear, I don’t want to--”

“I know, Peter.” She swipes her thumb across the back of his hand. “I know. I just think saying it helps. It doesn’t feel wrong when I tell you, because then I’m not hiding it. It’s not a secret. It’s normal.”

“Okay.”

“The only person I want to have sex with on a desk is you.”

His eyes sweep over her face like he’s scanning for a lie. It doesn’t exist, and he knows it, so he squeezes her hand, using it to bring her close, and she stumbles into his chest as he wraps his arms around her, nose pressing against the place where her neck curves into her shoulder. “I love you.”

“You wanna show me how much?” she asks. 

She feels the warm puff of air from his laugh tickling her ear, feels the solid, muscular press of him against her body. “Always.”

He kisses behind her ear, followed by light, brief sweeps along her jaw and chin until he meets her mouth. This kiss is hungry and wanting, his hand cradling the back of her head, tilting her so he can deepen it and nipping her bottom lip so she opens up to him. 

MJ does, pliant, reveling in Peter, the earthy scent of him and the shifting of his back against her greedy palms. He goes straight to her head, heedy and wonderful. 

If it wasn’t so fresh, she’d tease him for his unfounded worry. The way he sparks in her stomach and crackles behind her eyelids unparalleled. Peter warms her up with his smile, licks at her heart like a flickering candle flame that’ll never expire. Michelle wants to trail her tongue along the roof his mouth, between his top lip and against the ridges of his teeth, a barely there pressure that’ll make him keen. She wants to kiss him until her mouth is sore with it, bruised and wet and tingling.

MJ wants Peter writhing beneath her, gasping and groaning, holding her hips with surety, like she’s solid, not fragile but still precious. 

They break away to breathe, foreheads leaning together, his warm pants painting her mouth. One hand on her waist over her sweater, the other on her neck, thumb a wanted pressure against her pulse.

“We have to meet May,” Peter says thickly. “We promised we’d help in the kitchen.”

“We can be late.” MJ thumbs over the dip at the base of his spine. “You’re never on time for anything.”

His mouth tilts up. “You’re ridiculously punctual, and if we’re late, she’ll know why.”

“She knows we have sex, Peter.”

“MJ,” he warns, face scrunched up, disgusted and disgustingly cute.

She slips her hand underneath his hoodie and T-shirt, finding his hot skin. “So you don’t want to throw everything off your desk and have your way with your wife?”

“Em,” he groans, mouth brushing against her cheek. 

“I haven’t seen my _husband_,” she says just to feel his lips stutter against her skin, elated and needy, “in three months.”

“I know, I know.” The hand on her waist skims underneath her sweater now, splayed across her stomach and rubbing circles into her ribs. 

“And we won’t be alone for the rest of the weekend.”

“I know.”

“Unless you want to have sex on my desk on Saturday after dinner with your in-laws.”

“Surprisingly,” Peter says, fingertips edging against her bra, “_in-laws_ doesn’t do it for me.”

She laughs, pressing closer, trapping his hand between their bodies. “Noted.”

“You smell different,” he says, lips smearing back to hers. Peter finds where her ass meets her thigh to hoist her up. MJ wraps her legs around him, all instinct, feeling him half-hard against her. “New lotion?”

“Yeah. Brittany recommend it. It’s good. Cruelty free.”

He lifts her higher, humming before nipping against her jaw and carrying her toward his bedroom. “That’s good.”

“Yeah.”

“Adam likes it,” she says, just to see if he’ll drop her in the hallway. 

He doesn’t. Peter just scrapes his teeth gently across her throat, and she shivers against him. “You’re going to forget he exists by the time I’m done with you.”

She whines, doing her best to grind against him as he twists the handle to his bedroom. “I didn’t,” MJ starts, leaning her head back, pushing into him as he leaves an open-mouthed kiss at the base of her throat, “I didn’t tell you that to make you jealous.”

Michelle needs Peter to know. It wasn’t a game or a trick. It was just honesty. A tiny blip they’d be able to weather like a light spot of rain. She was never really tempted, her feelings for Peter never faltering. 

“I know,” he says, kicking the door shut behind them with a loud thud. 

If it wouldn’t make him supremely smug, she would tell him that even her dream - single, solitary, born from a group study session for the English midterm and the teasing conversation she had with Peter before bed - pales in comparison to the feeling of Peter’s mouth on hers.

MJ giggles when he struggles to move his desk chair, grunting in frustration. She clings tighter when he bends to swipe at the clutter littering his desk: a textbook falls to the ground with a loud thud, the softer thumps of notebooks following, a clattering of pens, a few loose sheets fluttering to the floor like paper planes. 

“Shit,” Peter says, settling her on the desk - what a gentleman - before saving the definitely used and not new textbook from where it’s bent open, spine looking perilously close to snapping in half. 

“We can have sex in your bed,” MJ says.

Peter looks up at her as he stands, tossing the textbook onto his mattress. He’s measured and controlled when he wants to be, and it lands perfectly, not smacking against the wall. “Bed’s occupied.”

She bites her lip, feels her smile. “Dork.”

Peter shakes his head, running his hands up her thighs as he leans in to kiss her, prying her open with tongue and teeth.

“Okay,” MJ pants as he works his fingers underneath the waistband of her jeans. She wiggles uselessly, trying to give him space to dip them lower. “You made your point.”

“Haven’t even started making my point,” he whispers low and gruff into her ear. 

She shivers. 

“This is what I’m going to be thinking about,” she tells, “when I touch myself.”

Peter pulls back to look at her, eyes dark and dilated. “Good.” He swallows, beginning to work at her belt. “Me too.”

“That wasn’t as hot as I thought it’d be,” MJ says, pulling her sweater over her head.

“I think we did it wrong.”

“There’s ink on my ass.”

When she bends over to retrieve her belt, Peter taps her right butt-cheek. “Still cute, though.”

“Are you done objectifying me?” she huffs, running the worn, faux leather through the loops. 

“Never,” Peter says.

She catches his eye as he pulls on his sweatshirt, cute hair askew, cute smile soft and fond, the collar of his T-shirt stretched out cutely. 

He’s ruining Michelle’s vocabulary, rotting her brain like hard candy rots teeth, and she loves him. 

“Men,” she sighs, shaking her head. “Disgusting.”

“Yeah.” He steps forward, smoothing down her hair and tucking it behind her ears. “Really gross.”

She fake gags, and Peter laughs, his breath fanning warm against her chin. 

“I’ll make an exception for you because I love you,” she says.

“I love you, too, Wife,” he answers, word almost distorted by how wide he grins, leaning up to kiss her, chaste and firm, sealing his love against her mouth. “But if we don’t get to the shelter soon, May might come looking for us.”

“I’m telling her it’s your fault we’re late.” MJ reaches up to tuck his hair down, returning the favor. 

Peter groans, but he doesn’t fight her on it. 

She almost thinks he forgot that she knocked his glass paperweight off his desk with her elbow until he says, “I’m invoicing you for that Darth Vader.”

“Jokes on you, because I’m getting us a joint bank account.”

He just beams.

Idiot.

“Cool.”

“I was kidding,” she says.

Peter ghosts his fingertips against the small of Michelle’s back as she leaves his room. “But some day?”

“I’ll consider it.”

“Cool.”


End file.
